New Volvo excavators for Earthline Ltd

Earthline Ltd of Ogbourne St George, near Marlborough, Wiltshire has taken delivery of its first new Volvo excavators thanks to the reliability and performance of its previously acquired Volvo EC700C’s according to Managing Director Philip Coplestone.

The two Volvo models in question are a forty eight tonne EC480D and a thirty eight tonne EC380D which have been deployed at two of the company’s five quarries in the Oxfordshire area. “These new Volvos have been bought on the strength of the reliability and performance of our original second hand EC700C which we purchased a couple of years ago,” explains Philip Coplestone. “Back then we wanted to see how the seventy tonne machine would fair ripping and loading rock directly from quarry face in one of our larger quarries and it proved highly successful. The machine was about three years old with around 6000 hours on the clock and it’s given us two years of trouble free operation,” he continues.

Based on this experience, Earthline Ltd went on to purchase an additional second hand EC700C for another quarry but it proved to be oversized for the job in hand which led to the company making the decision to buy a new EC480D complete with quick hitch, bucket and heavy duty ripper along with the smaller EC380D for overburden removal. “I can’t even say that part of our purchasing decision was due to the service support from Volvo because to be honest, since we’ve been running the EC700C's we have never had to call upon them for help!,” continues Mr Coplestone. However Earthline Ltd has opted to take out Volvo’s Blue Service Agreements on the two new models for total peace of mind.

At the heart of both machines is a Stage IIIB V-Act 13 litre engine developing 279 and 348 nett hp respectively and is ideally matched to its automatic sensing mode hydraulic system. The machines feature an automatic idling system that reduces engine speed when the levers and pedals are not activated – aiding fuel efficiency and lowering external noise. When only a single function is being used, the two pump hydraulics system combines the flow of both pumps for quick cycle times and greater productivity. It can also prioritize flow according to the work being done – e.g. to the boom for faster raising when loading or in deep excavations; to the arm during levelling or swing during large slewing angles.

Both machines have been deployed in two of the company’s five quarries with the EC480D ripping and loading limestone from quarry face and the EC380D used to strip overburden. The machines join a mixed fleet of equipment deployed across the whole of the company’s activities which besides extraction includes eight inert landfill sites and recycling facilities. However it is haulage and road transport that is at the heart of the twenty year old family run firm - in the hands of the second generation and brothers Philip and Matt Coplestone. Earthline Ltd, the largest haulage company in the locality, currently operates 59 tippers including four articulated rigs and is planning to increase the fleet to 68 this autumn servicing the company’s extraction, landfill and recycling concerns stretching as far as Banbury to the north and Winchester to the south, Bracknell to the east and Westbury to the west.

Volvo Construction Equipment Division markets wheeled loaders, articulated haulers, hydraulic excavators, graders, Volvo utility equipment and Volvo road equipment products in the U.K. There are eight strategically placed customer support centres and a network of utility equipment dealers to ensure high quality customer support is maintained throughout the country.